To be in such a horrible salary cap situation? Did Rick completely crap the bed on this one? It's not like we've won multiple super bowls yet we can't add anyone of note and we'll be extremely lucky to not lose more important players.

Both good and bad teams get into this problem. I mean the Steelers just cut Harrison because of his salary cap number. While he's slowed down some, Harrison is still a productive player. Its just part of the game.

Had the Texans blown the capless guidlines like the Redskins & Cowboys did, I'd be first in line to complain. But we only pressed hard against it ..... and got the two best seasons in franchise history.

Now the cap is virtually flatlined and teams with the spendiest owners are up against it and having to renegotiate like madmen & release some household names. Sucks, but it's the new normal.

Having to sign JoJo and Manning was a big part of it. It's not as if we're in huge trouble salary cap wise. You can't always expect to have $20 million in space each season.

Not around here. The Texans must have All-Pros at every position, win the Super Bowl every season, and have $20 million free every season to sign whatever big name is available.

The Texans have very little dead money right now. This is compared to yearly issues with Casserly. We have some good players making very good money which hurts, but it's better than having horrible players making that money.

The only real bad contract we have right now is Schaub. Was it premature to sign him to an extension? In hindsight, yeah. Remember that he was having his best season before the injury. He might have been telling the Texans that he wanted an extension in place before the end of the season or he was going to explore other options. There are no other QBs available right now that can step in and do as well as he has done. I think there are better QBs out there, a lot of them, but they aren't available. Had they waited, based on the struggles he had at the end of the season, they'd probably have been able to keep him for less than they signed him for. What if (I hate it, too, but you have to remember the Texans were looking at this in week 1) Schaub didn't struggle down the stretch and he pulled a Flacco? How many QB desperate teams would have jumped at him? The Texans were in a tough spot with him. QB is the most important position and a team that wants to win the Lombardi trophy needs to have a good signal caller.

As for all the pissing and moaning about Winston's release, DeMeco's trade, the inability to resign Brisiel I say look around the league every March. The Steelers just released Harrison. Yeah, he's been hurt, but he's still a former Defensive player of the year and on his worst day is better than Winston. Good teams let go of good players. They're good because they have good players that other teams want. When you lose a good player someone else will take him.

Do we want the days of Casserly when our cut players finished their degrees and got jobs like ours?

We can't keep every player. We can't bring in the top free agents every year. Name me the last Super Bowl winner to feature a guy that was signed away from another team as a top tier free agent? The Saints with Brees? He wasn't exactly a hot commodity after leaving San Diego with an injured shoulder.

Build through the draft. Find guys that can take over for leaving players (Mercilus for Barwin maybe) and put the money towards the players that you don't find in every draft (Andre, Watt). To stay successful over a long period of time you have to make a few tough decisions every year. Heck, the Patriots have gotten rid of pretty good players every year and it doesn't seem to faze them. Of course, they haven't won a Super Bowl in 10 years so maybe it has fazed them. Still, they are one of the top 4 or 5 teams every year by plugging in the next man up.

I don't think Smith has been perfect. We've missed on a few picks, but I'm happy that we're not having to cut players to get under the cap each year (yeah I'm looking at you Washington). I do think fans here play too much Madden and don't have a realistic understanding of what it reallly takes to run a team. I know I'm no expert, but I at least can see that we are in much better shape with Smith than most of the teams are with their GMs.

The answer to the OP's question is that we drafted too well and we added good FA pickups. The teams with a lot of cap space have that space because they don't have any good players to spend their money on (Bills, Browns, Jaguars, etc.)

"Cut wide receiver Kevin Walter, saving $2.5 million in cap space. Restructure the deal of wide receiver Andre Johnson, reducing his base salary from $10.5 million to $940,000 (giving him the rest now as a bonus), resulting in a salary-cap savings of $7.17 million. Restructure the deal of cornerback Johnathan Joseph, reducing his base salary from $7.5 million to $940,000 (giving him the rest now as a bonus), resulting in a salary-cap savings of $4.373 million. Extend defensive end Antonio Smith, reducing his 2013 base salary of $6 million and his cap charge of $9.5 million significantly."

We threw caution to the wind in the early part of the off-season in 2011 and finally purchased DECENT talent in J-Jo and Manning, for starters. That takes money, my friend. And that means eating up some cap space.

We've got AJ under contract, too, so there's some cap hit right there.

We gave Owen Daniels more money. That's less cap space to work with.

Duane Brown, Chris Myers, Arian Foster. All those guys got new deals.

How about Matt Schaub's new deal? More money, less cap space.

Who do you not pay? Do you not pay J-Jo...or Manning...or AJ...OD...Duane...Chris...Arian...Matt...which guy do you not pay?

We're no different than any other team. The teams with the best cap space will soon find themselves in the same position as us one day--Either having to shed salary because they overpaid a role player or two, OR because they have too many role players who started playing like superstars and they now want superstar money all of a sudden.

But hey, by all means...let's ***** about the GM finally being given the green light by the owner to go out and spend the cap space we DID have. Remember those days, those days when we knew we had cap space but we never spent it? Yeah, well we finally took a step forward in 2011 and it bought us two AFC South divisions and two divisional round playoff appearances. Not too shabby.

I don't understand the constant hand-wringing about the cap space here. We used to have plenty of space, but never did anything with it. Result? Scrubs at every position not manned by Mario and AJ. Now we have little cap room, but we have two AFC South division titles and two divisional round appearances...and suddenly Rick **** the bed on the cap.

The answer to the OP's question is that we drafted too well and we added good FA pickups. The teams with a lot of cap space have that space because they don't have any good players to spend their money on (Bills, Browns, Jaguars, etc.)

I should have read through the thread first, I would have chosen to quote you and then say "This ^^^^."

"Cut wide receiver Kevin Walter, saving $2.5 million in cap space. Restructure the deal of wide receiver Andre Johnson, reducing his base salary from $10.5 million to $940,000 (giving him the rest now as a bonus), resulting in a salary-cap savings of $7.17 million. Restructure the deal of cornerback Johnathan Joseph, reducing his base salary from $7.5 million to $940,000 (giving him the rest now as a bonus), resulting in a salary-cap savings of $4.373 million. Extend defensive end Antonio Smith, reducing his 2013 base salary of $6 million and his cap charge of $9.5 million significantly."

"Cut wide receiver Kevin Walter, saving $2.5 million in cap space. Restructure the deal of wide receiver Andre Johnson, reducing his base salary from $10.5 million to $940,000 (giving him the rest now as a bonus), resulting in a salary-cap savings of $7.17 million. Restructure the deal of cornerback Johnathan Joseph, reducing his base salary from $7.5 million to $940,000 (giving him the rest now as a bonus), resulting in a salary-cap savings of $4.373 million. Extend defensive end Antonio Smith, reducing his 2013 base salary of $6 million and his cap charge of $9.5 million significantly."

That's an awful plan. Restructuring that much just means we'd be adding enormous amounts of salary in the future. Brian Cushing's contract is up next year. JJ Watt's contract is up the year after. The Texans are going to have to re-sign them, and restructuring current deals would make those signings very hard to pull off.

"Cut wide receiver Kevin Walter, saving $2.5 million in cap space. Restructure the deal of wide receiver Andre Johnson, reducing his base salary from $10.5 million to $940,000 (giving him the rest now as a bonus), resulting in a salary-cap savings of $7.17 million. Restructure the deal of cornerback Johnathan Joseph, reducing his base salary from $7.5 million to $940,000 (giving him the rest now as a bonus), resulting in a salary-cap savings of $4.373 million. Extend defensive end Antonio Smith, reducing his 2013 base salary of $6 million and his cap charge of $9.5 million significantly."

He makes a lot of good points. I'm still strongly against drafting a wide receiver. The help we need at the number two position opposite of Andre Johnson can only come through free agency. We need to sign an impact guy right away like Mike Wallace. The Dolphins and Vikings are already hot in pursuit when it should be us finding a way to make that big splash. You can also restructure the deals of Matt Schaub and Arian Foster to create even more cap space.

We're not going to find that instant help at wide receiver in the draft. We already have tons of inconsistent young guys on the roster. It's going to take two or three years before we know if that rookie wideout is a legitimate pro bowler. By then Andre Johnson will no longer be a dominating number one. Our window to win a Super Bowl with Andre still being an elite player is 2013, 2014 and maybe 2015. We're talking about three more seasons starting now.

I like to pick on Rick Smith, but the truth is this is not a bad situation to be in. This is "normal" in the cap era. Teams like the Patriots don't look bad, because they really don't have any players to speak of either. They paid Tom Brady, but that's about it. Wes Welker is twiddling his thumbs waiting to see what they're going to do. FA starts in 2 days.

They get a lot out of their QB, he seems to make everyone else look better. Our players make our QB look better..... more or less. If Arian & the OL ain't doing their thing, he struggles (or it seems as much lately), If Andre isn't Andre, Matt struggles when Walter, OD, Casey, or Arian have the drops (but who wouldn't?).

We're fine, we've got options. Why Smith hasn't acted on them yet is a matter of opinion, but we're not near as bad as we make it seem.

That's an awful plan. Restructuring that much just means we'd be adding enormous amounts of salary in the future. Brian Cushing's contract is up next year. JJ Watt's contract is up the year after. The Texans are going to have to re-sign them, and restructuring current deals would make those signings very hard to pull off.

That's the sacrifice we have to make to win a Super Bowl while we still have aging franchise icons like Andre Johnson. So what if we're in cap hell when the 2016 regular season rolls around? By then we're going to be in the market for a new number one wide receiver, tight end, quarterback, likely our entire secondary and several other key positions.

Arian Foster will probably be washed up by then given how many carries he's taking as well. We need to win that Lombardi in February of 2014, 2015 and 2016 (part of the 2015 season).

Our window of opportunity to win the Super Bowl is right now. Let's get it done while we can. We had some excellent teams in 2011 and 2012 but it wasn't good enough. But we can't sit here complaining about the salary cap and the future repercussions, while teams like the Patriots, Ravens and Broncos are loading up for the 2013 season.

Forget restructuring AJs deal. They've already done that in 2011 & 2012. His cap number will be so high in 2015 that the Texans will be forced to cut him. They could redo JoJo's deal, but they have to be sure his performance won't slip in the future. Risky for a CB who will turn 30 prior to the 2014 season.

Something needs to be done with Walter. An outright cut leaves the team with a big fat collection of nothing at #2 WR. They better be able to use that cap savings from Walter to get a vet WR. I would rather ask him for a salary reduction (as they did last year), and save $1.5mil rather than $2.5 million on the cap.

Releasing Wade Smith frees up $3 million. He's really not Pro Bowl caliber, but the Texans have questions at RG & RT already. Do they really want to create another hole on the o-line?

The real key to the Texans cap is deciding what to do with Antonio Smith. He's in the last year of his deal with $6 million in salary. Give Smith that $6million (and more) up front and extend him through 2015, and the Texans could get some cap relief. But, they would be tied to a 30 something d-lineman for 3 years. Can the Texans cobble together a DE from a returning Tim Jamison, a 2nd year Jared Crick, and a draft choice? If the answer is yes, that would be a $6million savings.